Right-wing politicians like Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro are really good at lying.
Trump, of course, is notorious for distorting facts, twisting them out of all reality, and then yelling his nonsense to reporters as he is about to get into one of his noisy helicopters. The chopper noise from the helicopters prevents reporters from asking him the questions they want to ask him. It’s all part of how Trump controls the narrative.
Along comes Bolsonaro, who is even more right-wing than Trump. The Amazon rain forest is a big part of our planet’s “lungs," and Bolsonaro’s Amazon rain forest is on fire, with severe consequences for the accelerating global warming (https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/index.html), but Bolsonaro, with no evidence, blames the fires on non-governmental organizations who, he says, are trying to embarrass him.
That’s why our South America correspondent, Sylvania Juguete, confronted Bolsonaro at his office in Brasilia early this morning, demanding that he fess up and tell the truth.
Bolsonaro was typically abrupt. “Sylvania,” he said, “there is no such thing as global warming. Just ask my close personal friend Donnie Trump.”
Elsewhere, giant e-Commerce retailer Overstock's CEO, Patrick Byrne, has resigned after admitting that he had a three-year affair with one of Vladimir Putin’s top spies, Maria Butina (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-deep-state-1472132).
Byrne was one of the most prominent proponents of the “deep state” narrative; see also https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/22/overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-resigns-after-saying-he-aided-deep-state-russia-investigation/.
Butina is incarcerated for infiltrating right-wing organizations as part of Putin’s successful effort to get Trump to where he is now.
When associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones asked Trump about Byrne’s admission that he had willfully spread misinformation about Hillary Clinton, Trump told his personal lawyer, William Barr, to arrest Jones so she can never, ever again tell DNC Chair Tom Perez what’s really going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.